A Contrarian's Mind And Art

Fear is both rational and irrational, so finding the middle ground is the best way to live. There are times when it can save your life and times when it can destroy it. Being okay with being alone is more about temperament than anything. Introverts fear social interaction so being alone may be their comfort zone, but I know some shy or frightened folks who are more fearful of human interaction than they are of being alone and the lesser of the two evils often wins.

Preparation is one key to losing fear. You don’t fear the exam at school if you are prepared. You lose sleep over things that are out of your control not things you have in hand. I once studied the Bible every day. I even published a book about what I learned called Praying When Prayer Doesn't Work. One lesson I learned about fear is that every time someone was afraid the divine antidote was Presence: Fear not, I am with you. The presence of a trusted leader figure allays fear and makes the monster under the bed flee. The unknown can always be counted on to create fear and the greater the stakes, the greater the fear.

Whatever you choose to believe or not about faith answers, understand that preparation and presence slay most fears. So those who are okay being alone must have a grip on those issues and also enjoy their own company because they have an accurate self appraisal of who they are.

Perspective I believe the fear of being alone - as in not having friends - is something overcome with through Perspective. We are all different so if one is beautiful, smart and vivacious they might expect to always have plenty of friends and followers, but that’s often not the case. When I taught school, I had a student who was a real princess. She was beautiful, an honor student, popular, a cheerleader and even the president of the class. One day she was moping around after school so I asked her what was wrong. Because she trusted me she was able to finally admit that she wondered why no boys liked her. I chuckled and assured her that she was not the problem, other than she was too magnificent for most 9th grade boys to approach. When she understood that perspective, that she was not flawed, more like intimidating, her sunshine returned.

I believe that people who are not like her often get into the trap of negative self-talk to the point where they believe their own propaganda. Consequently, they assume everyone else looks down on them as well and they retreat to their cave. It takes a change perspective to understand that they have valuable contributions to make to others that are not based on exterior qualities, but interior values.

So if one is not blessed with external beauty or lots of money, they ought to look for people with common interests and allow the inner beauty to overcome external deficiencies. As Whitney Houston sang “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”

Life need not always be a competition with the cool kids. In fact that’s the road to self-conflict and stress. I learned long ago that contentment is living in a state when you don’t have to prove anything to any one. Love yourself then others will follow.

Well, that’s a big answer to a very good question. I hope it helps.